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Definition
| scientific study of the way in which people's thoughts, feelings, and actions are influenced by the perceived presence of others; the how and why thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shaped by social environment |
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| the way in which people perceived, understand, and interpret the social world; subjective interpretation |
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| Social psychology versus sociology |
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social psych focuses more on the individual while sociology looks into societal factors that influences events in groupings of people organized in social categories
(level of analysis) |
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| Social psych versus personality psych |
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| social psychology examines the similarities among individuals while personality psych focuses on individual differences |
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| Individual differences (personality psych) |
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| the aspects of people's personality that makes them different from others |
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| once it has already occurred, the tendency for people to overestimate how accurately they could have predicted the outcome; "I knew it all along" |
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| Fundamental attribution error |
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Definition
tendency to believe that actions are influenced more by personality traits than by social/situational factors
(underestimate situational and overestimate internal factors) |
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| Examples of fundamental attribution error |
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ex. blaming the victim in rape cases; she must have done something to deserve it because ___ type of people don't get raped. (flawed thinking)
ex. in the cases on parents killing their own kids (e.g. in a cult environment), it is easier to assume that those parents ere "flawed" people rather than attribute it to the situation they where in |
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a school of psychology that emphasizes looking at the way in which an object is represented in people's mind rather that its actual physical attributes
ex. painting; you aren't looking that the specific lines, you are interpreting the painting entirely |
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| Two primary basic human motives |
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| the need to feel good about ourselves (self-esteem) and the need to be accurate |
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| an evaluation of our own self worth; the extent to which we find ourselves decent, good, and competent |
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| how people think about themselves and the social world; how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information |
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| ex. told teacher which kids are going to "bloom" (which were chosen at random); the "bloomers" did better in class regardless of how the teachers thought they treated everyone (as equals) |
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| the process by which traits that promote survival in an environment are passed along to future generations |
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| the attempt to explain social behavior through genetic factors that evolved over time (natural selection) |
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